India's coffee output in the crop year to September 2004 is expected to be hit by poor pre-monsoon showers in May, compounding woes caused by a 30-year slump in prices and a hangover from last year's drought.

Officials said on Thursday that poor rainfall had mainly hit export-oriented arabicas.

The state-run Coffee Board had assessed the (Oct-Sept) 2003-04 crop at 275,000 tonnes, marginally below the 275,275 tonnes estimated for the current year ending September, but it was now unsure of achieving that figure, a senior official of the board told Reuters.

"There is a big 'if' now," said the official, who asked not to be identified. "We would like to assess the situation in mid-June. We believe it still can be made up."

He said poor rains in May in the main coffee growing areas of Karnataka and neighbouring Kerala had come on top of a 35 per cent to 40 per cent drop in the use of fertiliser to protect the profitability of plantations due to low global prices.

Last year's drought had led to a surge in pests and diseases in coffee plants, planters and officials said.

Bose Mandanna, a leading grower and a former vice-chairman of the board, told Reuters the drought had triggered heat conditions conducive for the hatching of white stem borer eggs.

"Unfavourable blossom showers and very scant backing showers, in addition to the white stem borer problem in arabicas, will surely reduce the estimated crop for arabica by 25-30 per cent," Mandanna said.

He said the arabica crop in 2003-04 could be as low as 80,000 tonnes, against the Coffee Board's estimate of 105,000 tonnes.

But robustas, which had an "on-year" last year, could show a fair crop following reasonable blossom showers, he added.

"We may revise upwards the figure for robusta," a Coffee Board source said.

India is estimated to have produced 275,275 tonnes in the drought-hit 2002-03 year, down from the previous year's 300,600 tonnes. Of this, 102,125 tonnes was arabica and the rest robusta, India's main coffee variety.

Ramesh Rajah, president of India's Coffee Exporters Association, told Reuters that a second wave of rains called the North East monsoon had also failed last year and poor pre-monsoon rains this year could accentuate the problem.

"Now they expect output to be 25 per cent lower but probably it is not so bad," Rajah said.